The Slash'EM Black Market FAQ

Overview

The Black Market level in Slash'EM is a huge general shop taking up
almost the entirety of the level. It appears in all games, and is
accessed via a portal on dungeon level 22 or 23. The following
messages indicate that the portal is on the current level:

You hear someone complaining about the prices.

Somebody whispers "Food rations? Only 900 zorkmids."

You feel like searching for more gold. (Only when hallucinating.)

The most obvious difference between the Black Market and a normal shop
is that you will be vastly overcharged for items. The prices for
almost all items including all magical items are 50 times normal, and
the prices for other items are 25 times normal. You can sell items at
the usual selling price, and the shopkeeper has more money than other
shopkeepers, but by the time you reach the Black Market, you probably
no longer need gold.

The shopkeeper, One-Eyed Sam, is much tougher and better armoured than
other shopkeepers. He is equipped with a long sword named Thiefbane,
gray dragon scale mail, a shield of reflection, speed boots, and an
amulet of life saving, and his weapon and armour tend to be highly
enchanted. He is also stoning resistant. Thiefbane has a 10% chance
per hit of beheading you and a 15% chance of cancelling you, as well
as the ability to drain levels.

You are not permitted to enter the Black Market while polymorphed,
although there are no longer any other restrictions on the use of
polymorph on that level (so you can enter and then immediately
polymorph). The Black Market is also a no-teleport level.

Since the prices in the Black Market are so high, it is not practical
to buy the items you need. I have come across four workable
strategies for stealing from One-Eyed Sam: in order of increasing
risk, they are to shoplift the Black Market with the aid of a pet or
to acquire large amounts of credit (thanks to David Throop for this
strategy), to grab the stuff you need and run, and to kill him.

Shoplifting with a pet

Pets cannot trigger the portal to the Black Market or follow you
through it, even when leashed. The only way to get an
existing pet into the Black Market is to teleport there with the Eye
of the Aethiopica. However, almost all the normal ways of acquiring a
pet will still work in the Black Market. The exceptions are spells of
charm monster, scrolls of taming, and the revivification technique,
which will all just anger their target.

To shoplift the Black Market, first go through everything in the shop
sorting it into things you want and things you don't. Pile the things
you don't want in a corner, and arrange the things you want around the
door, along with One-Eyed Sam's tripe rations. Then have your pet
steal everything in the normal way.

This is a low-risk strategy, but it is rather slow, and there are
three points to watch when using it which don't cause problems if
you're robbing Sam or killing him.

Be very careful of scrolls of scare monster. If you destroy any and
can't afford to pay, you'll have to change your strategy.

You will consume a lot of food while sorting through Sam's stuff.

You may not have enough scrolls of identify for everything in the
shop.

Stealing credit

David Throop suggests that you can use hostile monsters to help you
gain large amounts of credit in the Black Market. Drop all your gold,
and wait for a hostile monster that likes gold (e.g. a dragon) to be
generated. When it picks the gold up, leave the market. It will
chase you into the hallway, where you can kill it and pick up your
gold. If you need more credit, repeat this procedure.

If you get your first chunk of credit before doing anything else in
the Black Market, you'll be able to consume some of Sam's property
while sorting through it, which is an advantage over the shoplifting
strategy. Waiting for the right type of hostile monsters sounds
rather slow, though. You could also steal credit with the aid of a
reasonably strong pet - put all your gold in a spare bag and have your
pet repeatedly steal the bag.

Grabbing the loot and running

This is my favourite Black Market strategy. The key is to teleport
Sam out of your way before leaving the shop so that you don't have to
kill him or deal with him attempting to kill you. You will, however,
have to deal with his assistants, and with hordes of soldiers around
the portal. If at all possible, have free action before teleporting
Sam, so that Izzy the rhaumbusun can't paralyse you. David Throop
points out that you can use conflict and let the assistants kill each
other before robbing the shop. (If you attack any of them yourself,
Sam will become angry.)

Here's a step-by-step guide to this strategy.

Sort the shop into three piles, one each for items you don't want,
items you do want, and items you might want. You can feed yourself on
Sam's food and monster corpses while doing this, and it doesn't matter
if you destroy scrolls of scare monster, as you're not going to pay
anyway.

Identify the items in the ``might want'' pile and determine whether
you want them. You can use Sam's identify scrolls.

Toughen yourself up with some of the wanted items (extra healing,
full healing, enchant weapon, enchant armour), and stuff the rest into
your bag of holding. Ideally you should be unburdened at the end of
this step.

Move next to One-Eyed Sam and zap him with a wand of
teleportation.

Run!

Jackson Simth has suggested a refinement to this strategy. If you can
cast the spell of passwall, or have some means of controlled
polymorph, then after grabbing everything you want, you can walk out
through the wall and straight into the portal. The hordes of soldiers
will still be summoned, but won't have a chance to go through the
portal.

Matt Roe points out another refinement: ``the Eye of the Aethiopica
will not work inside the market but it will work one step outside the
door'' so after teleporting Sam and running out of the door, you can
invoke the Eye and get well away from the hordes.

Killing One-Eyed Sam

The advantages of this strategy are that you get One-Eyed Sam's
personal items, which can help fill out your ascension kit, and that
you can return to the Black Market afterwards. The disadvantages are
that One-Eyed Sam might kill you and that if you're not chaotic you'll
suffer the usual penalty for murder. I don't like killing peaceful
monsters, so I only do this when I've accidentally run into Sam with
Stormbringer. As before, free action is recommended for this
strategy.

Taking Sam on in melee combat is extremely dangerous, especially if
you lack level-drain resistance. Kristopher J Preacher has suggested
a safer way to kill him. First use conflict to make the assistants
kill each other, then read a few scrolls of earth and surround Sam
with boulders. You can now safely kill him from afar, and he won't be
able to touch you. He does not resist poison, so one way to kill him
from afar is with poison darts (thanks to Alan Beck for this
suggestion).

If you have to melee Sam, disarm him as soon as possible, either with
the disarm technique or with a bullwhip. It also helps to attack him
from outside his shop so that you can retreat at will. It appears
that if you are invisible, then once Sam is hostile he will
never move from his spot in front of the doorway. This helps you
because when you retreat from the doorway, Sam still stands there,
blocking his assistants from chasing after you. They can still use
their ranged attacks, but you can prevent this by closing the door.
No-one will open it, so you'll have all the time you need to heal. If
you are not invisible, Sam can follow you out of his shop. He doesn't
open doors himself but his assistants do.

This spoiler was written by Eva Myers (erm1001@cam.ac.uk).
If you have any comments, additions or corrections, please feel free
to email me.